All Things Wicked

by Karina Cooper

  Caleb wanted to do something.

  Christ, anything.

  Instead, he was forced to sit quietly, staring at the ring as the witch who introduced herself as Naomi West sat on the mattress beside his sister, hand to hand.

  His sister’s lover hadn’t moved, either. Silas Smith filled a chair by the bed, his pose similar to Caleb’s in every way save for the direction of his stare.

  He hadn’t taken his eyes off Jessie since Caleb had come in. Even then, Caleb had gotten only a flick of attention, a tightening of his mouth, and then a jerk of a thumb to the wooden chest.

  So they continued. Silent. Waiting.

  And a terrible, nameless fear gripped Caleb’s heart.

  This was worse than even the most awful of his visionary fits. Seeing took effort, it took energy and concentration and a release of magic usually kept bottled up beneath the skin. Caleb knew as intimately as anyone how much effort the magic required.

  Sometimes seeing came without warning. Most of Caleb’s visions were like that. Jessie had always been able to control it.

  But this looked like he felt.

  What would she tell them when she woke up?

  If she woke up. This wasn’t right. The hollow space behind his heart, the rhythmic ache that tunneled deeper than just his head wasn’t right.

  He squeezed his eyes shut. Thunder trembled through the aching silence.

  Finally, Naomi stirred. Caleb raised his head, watching her as she stretched, working out the kinks in her back from hunching for so long. She opened her eyes on a puzzled frown.

  Silas leaped to his feet. “Is she all right?” he demanded. His voice, deeper than most, rumbled on his version of a whisper.

  The witch tucked Jessie’s pale, unresponsive hand back against the blanket. “I don’t know.”

  Caleb’s gaze flicked to Jessie. Her wide mouth, mirror to their mother’s, was pinched. As if in pain. Or struggling. But she didn’t make any sound, and her breath remained jerky. Uneven.

  His hands clenched together over the ring, fingers tangled until the pain forced him to ease off.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Silas demanded.

  She put a hand on his broad shoulder and pushed him to the side of the bed. “Stay with her. She’s going to need help.”

  “Help? Help, how?” He looked helplessly between Jessie and Naomi. “Is this a witch thing?”

  Caleb studied Naomi’s face, the sudden flare of her thickly lashed eyes. His shoulders slumped. “She’s dying,” he said.

  Naomi’s glance flicked to the ceiling.

  Silas surged off the side of the bed, sending the springs into a cacophony of protest. “You shut the fuck up,” he growled, but Naomi gripped his shoulder again.

  The single action, wordless and infinitely poignant, confirmed what Caleb had only suspected.

  He’d always had a bond with his sister. That’s why he’d worn the flint. To save her from his pain.

  A pain he no longer carried. Had it moved to her? Could it?

  Silas sank back to the bed, and it was as if the strength simply leeched from his big frame. Suddenly ashen, he looked up at the woman with the blue-violet eyes.

  She shook her head. A fraction.

  Claws sank into Caleb’s heart. Venom slid through his veins; guilt, rage. A maelstrom of it locked in his throat, and he stared at his clasped hands as they trembled. The ring pressed into his palms, ridged and unbending.

  In his peripheral, Silas reached for Jessie’s hand. His own dwarfed hers, but even Caleb could see the gentleness, the sheer tenderness of the gesture.

  Caleb gritted his teeth. “What’s the cause?”

  “I don’t know.” Naomi shrugged, as if to emphasize her bewilderment. “I’m still pretty new to this stuff, but for all I can tell, she’s not hurt. I can’t find any physical damage. She’s not bleeding anywhere, she hasn’t suffered any falls lately. Aside from a few bruises, she’s in perfect health. She’s just . . . fading.”

  Caleb stared at his fingers. At the scars that turned his left hand into a patchwork tangle of rough and shiny skin.

  “Her magic’s going haywire,” Naomi continued quietly. “I got fringes of it while I was poking around.” She scrubbed her hands over her face. “I need to refuel. I’ll be back to try again as soon as I’ve got enough juice.”

  Caleb said nothing.

  She paused, hand on the door, and slid him a thoughtful, speculative stare. “I just about gave myself an aneurysm healing your wounds, Leigh.”

  Well, that explained his general lack of pain. Caleb glanced at her. “Thanks.”

  Her eyes narrowed. Flicked to Silas. Then, saying nothing else, she left. The door closed quietly behind her, leaving Caleb trapped in the stifling one-room house with the man who wanted him dead.

  And the sister Caleb had already risked everything to save.

  Power going haywire? As much energy as it took to fuel the visions, if it were just going and going, it could explain the fading.

  Loss of control. Caleb braced his chin on his fists, staring blankly at the floor. Magic going haywire.

  Like Juliet.

  And like Juliet, his sister had been tattooed with a bar code. Like Juliet, she’d simply always had it.

  What was the connection?

  Silas’s thumb stroked back a lock of golden hair from Jessie’s eyes. It shook.

  Fury carved another notch into Caleb’s restraint. “Look—”

  “She never gave up on you.” The rumbled voice slammed through his uncertain words; quiet, but with an impact that plowed into Caleb’s head like an avalanche.

  He jerked his head up.

  Silas didn’t look at him. He laced his fingers through Jessie’s and stared somewhere past the bed.

  Caleb closed his eyes.

  “Nothing to say to that?” Silas chuckled, the sound filled with knives. “Guess I’m not surprised. You’re the one who left her to die.”

  Caleb’s shoulders went rigid. Every muscle in his body locked. What could he say?

  The man was right.

  He’d turned her over to a coven who wanted to kill her—her own brother—while a missionary obligated to destroy her ended up saving her life.

  Sacrifice. Wasn’t that what Lydia Leigh had taught her children? Sacrifice to survive. Sacrifice for love.

  He’d done that.

  He’d done it all for her. Murdered and lied and schemed and manipulated, atrocious things he’d sold his soul to do. He’d done everything for her. For her and the city Jessie loved so much.

  The city he hated. Magicians and fools.

  His fingers tightened over the ring. Wasn’t it all supposed to mean something?

  Then Silas had saved her. He owed the man everything for that; he’d wanted nothing more than for Jessie to be happy. To live her life.

  Wasn’t it supposed to be happily ever after for her?

  Not . . . this.

  “She never gave up on you, though,” Silas repeated, and Caleb exhaled hard, an angry sound. Silas didn’t look back. “Even after she learned about all those people you killed. And after you tied her to that fucking altar—” His voice broke. With inhuman effort, he gathered himself again. “She made me promise. If you ever showed up again—”

  “I don’t want to—”

  “Too bad.” Silas’s gaze dropped to Jessie’s pale, pixie features. “Your sister made me promise to give you a chance. A fucking chance to prove yourself again.”

  A chance. God damn him.

  “Now,” Silas said hoarsely, “I wish I never did.”

  Caleb shot to his feet as something black and nameless seized hold of his head. Across the small room, Silas stiffened.

  Wordless, echoing with a rage he didn’t know how to channel, Caleb strode for the door. It slammed shut behind him, shut on the pathetic image of the big ex-missionary hunched over the frail figure of his lover.

  Of Caleb’s sister.

  For a long moment, fists sha
king at his sides, Caleb stared over the green bay and saw nothing but Jessie. The girl who had raised him after their mother had been murdered. The girl who had taught him to lie to survive, to stay low and out of sight.

  The woman he had once seen burning in a fire set by the coven he’d then set out to destroy.

  For what? For her to die anyway?

  “Shit,” he said through a throat gone tight and ragged. “Shit. Shit, fuck, no.” It wouldn’t end like this.

  It would not—could not end like this.

  Jessie hadn’t given up on him. He’d be damned if he gave up on her.

  He leaped off the porch, pushed the ring into his pocket and sprinted across the flagstones. In the ravaged depths of his mind, he knew what he needed to do, and his body acted on instinct while his thoughts raged on.

  He knew the game. He knew the pieces and would force the hand of fate, even if it killed him. He’d see what he had to do and take care of it. Back in the ruins, Juliet had peeled him open with a wild flare of her magic. Sharper than he’d ever known. For a moment, a split second, he’d seen.

  He’d see those visions again. The answers were there.

  But he needed her to do it.

  Promise me.

  Not this time.

  He found Juliet on a black sand beach at the opposite end of the crescent bay, her bare feet mired in the wet sand and the warm, green water lapping the shore. Sulfurous vapors danced around her, licked at her skin. Touched everything he wished so fucking badly he didn’t know the feel of already.

  He surged out of the hedge of fronds like a man possessed.

  She jerked in surprise, tried to jump to her feet, but the sand she’d buried her toes in sucked at her balance. She flailed, staggered, and fell to her knees as he loomed over her.

  Her eyes flashed at him. The hot spring water soaked into her borrowed skirt. “What—”

  Caleb grabbed her upper arms and yanked her upright. The sand gave way with a soft, wet, sucking noise. “How much do you hate me?” he demanded.

  Her lashes, tinged by a faint golden sheen without her mascara to mask it, widened. “What?”

  Don’t do this.

  “How much,” he repeated between gritted teeth, dragging her face close to his, “do you hate me?”

  “I don’t—”

  He shook her, hard enough to snap her head back in shock. Hard enough to clack her teeth together, to see a flush of red climb her cheeks. “I gathered your coven together,” he said tightly, every word rasping with the effort as the darkness filled him. Swallowed him. “I brought them together knowing that I’d already set bombs across the field.”

  The color in her cheeks heightened.

  Please. . .

  “I watched them as they burned, Juliet. Your friends. I set them on fire. Have you ever smelled burning flesh? Have you?”

  Her eyes glistened, and something in Caleb’s chest twisted. Hard. “I hate that,” she said softly, her lips trembling. “I hate that you throw it in my face. I hate that you used me for a shield when those witches came after us—”

  Caleb set her down, hard enough to jar her words loose, but she jerked her chin up. Shoved at his chest.

  He staggered back a step.

  “I hate that you had to do it,” she continued, even as a tear slid from her pale green eyes. “But you took the bullet for me, Caleb. You think I didn’t notice?” She shook her head, the black fringe of her hair sliding over one eye. “I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but you won’t get it from me.”

  Rage battered at him. Clawed into his throat, his lungs, forced itself through his lips in a wordless, helpless, inhuman sound.

  Juliet took a step back, flinching.

  He matched it, forcing a step forward. “Tell me you hate me,” he ordered. He needed to trigger that spill of power that tried to get into his head. Needed to crack her open, to force the visions that would tell him what to do. How to do it.

  No matter what it did to him, to her, he had to know. To help.

  She backed away and he crowded her, step for step. Foot for foot. The black sand clung to her bare feet, her hands and skirt. “Tell me you hate me for pushing you against that wall and taking you that night,” he growled.

  Her lips parted, eyes wide. A breath shuddered from her chest, but she shook her head even as her back came up hard against the cliff wall. He flattened both hands by her shoulders, caged her with his body.

  A whisper of warning ghosted through his head; a murmur of raw lust speared through his gut. His temples twinged.

  “I—” She licked her upper lip. “I always—”

  She’s just a rose. . .

  No. She was the key. She could tear him open. Without his sight, Jessie would die in that bed. Everything he knew, everything he loved would go up in smoke. Again.

  Not if he could help it. So he pushed her. Pinned her. “You hate me,” he said fiercely, leaning in until her breasts curved into his chest, soft and warm and like a punch to his nerves. Crowding her until she couldn’t possibly miss the telltale signs of his arousal against her thigh. “Tell me you hate me for fucking you. For leaving you.”

  Her eyes squeezed shut. She tried to turn her face away, but he caught her chin in one rough hand and forced it back. “Tell me to fuck you again,” he told her, so softly that she gasped. “That you want it.”

  Color swept up from her throat, over her cheeks. It flooded her fair skin, and her eyes opened. Glassy with need. With confusion.

  Anguished.

  She had to give him what he needed.

  But as he watched her emotions clash inside her dazed eyes, it infuriated him to know he needed her. Visions be damned.

  He trapped her jaw in his hand and crushed his mouth to hers. The instant their lips touched, the moment the contact sizzled across his body like a live wire, the needling whisper in his head simmered to a faint buzz. Pressure so mild that his own damned lust nearly drowned it out.

  She gasped, and Caleb forcefully tilted her head to fit his lips more firmly against her own. He deepened the kiss without gentleness or permission, stabbing his tongue into the dark heat of her mouth to taste her. To devour her; damn him to hell, he wanted to crawl inside her head and possess everything she was.

  She whimpered, and everything in his body thrilled to life. To sudden, electric attention. She raised her hands to twine them around his neck but he wrenched them away, captured her wrists in one hand and jerked them high above her head. He pinned her there, shackled to the cliff wall as she panted beneath him.

  Her eyes were glazed, but snapping. Crackling with raw emotion. With lust?

  With anger?

  With magic.

  The pressure in his head intensified as she sucked in a hard breath. “Don’t do this,” she said raggedly. “I can . . . I can just give you—”

  Inside his own head, Caleb staggered under the crushing weight of guilt. Of condemnation. But her body strained against his grip, giving lie to her words. She wanted him.

  She needed to hate him. It would be so much safer for her if she just hated him.

  She doesn’t know how.

  He found the hem of her skirt and hiked it up with one hand. Juliet pulled at the grip around her wrists. Gasped as his palms found the warm flesh of her upper thigh.

  His fingers skimmed the soft curls between her legs. Her head fell back against the cliff wall, and something in him bent. Cracked.

  She closed her eyes. “Caleb, please— Oh!”

  And with her cry, shuddering and sweet, the presence—that sensation of other in his head—was gone.

  And he was lost.

  He stroked across the cleft of her warm, soft flesh. Traced the delicate folds of her body as she shuddered in his grip. Her legs opened and hunger swamped him. Filled him with a need so bright and sharp and ravenous that he groaned.

  Without warning, he slid two fingers into her.

  She cried out. Her hips jerked.

  He cursed as
he found her already wet, her warm channel so tight that her muscles clenched around his fingers. Her eyes slammed open, wicked bright and half gone already, and he struggled not to throw her skirt up and take her right here, right now. Hard and fast against this cliff wall.

  He knew what it could be like.

  He knew how badly he craved it. Wasn’t this what he’d wanted all along?

  Caleb coaxed her legs wider, stroked her slowly. “Tell me you want me,” he whispered again, a refrain that hammered at his conscious mind. Tell me what I need to hear.

  She sucked in a breath, but it arced out on a sound that curled into his cock and pulsed. Sexy, so feminine. Wanton as hell, and oh, God, he was in trouble.

  “Tell me you want me to do this.”

  “Why?” she cried, even as her hips thrust against his fingers. Rode his hand, all but stroking herself against him. “Oh, please. Please.”

  Keeping his other hand firmly around her wrists, he dropped his mouth to her breasts, breathing out against the thin yellow fabric. She arched into him, sobbing out a sound between a gasp and a laugh as he touched her clit with his thumb. Just a graze.

  A tease.

  “Say it, Juliet,” he said against her soft curve. She shook her head, writhing. He took her nipple into his mouth, laving it through the fabric of her shirt, sucking it deeply until she shuddered.

  His thumb came down hard on the swollen bead of nerves, stroking it, over and over as he transferred his attention to her other nipple. She was sobbing, flushed and so ripe that his fingers slid in and out without any resistance.

  With inhuman effort, Juliet wrenched at her arms. His grip broke, and she tunneled her fingers into his hair to yank his face up.

  Her eyes were wild, mouth parted, breath heaving.

  And she kissed him.

  Against everything he expected, everything he’d craved and desperately hoped he never got, she fit her lips to his, voracious and wild and demanding, and kissed him.

  Intentions snapped.

  Control shattered.

  He forgot the need to see. Forgot the coven, the conflict. Her mouth opened under his and something wild in him flared. Away from anger and violence. Away from fear.